In a lawsuit, car maker says former employee hacked into computer system to steal company data and send it to an unnamed third party

Tesla Inc. in a lawsuit Wednesday accused a former employee of hacking into the auto maker’s computer system to steal company data and send it to an unnamed third party.

The Silicon Valley electric-car maker’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in Nevada, says the former employee, Martin Tripp, admitted to writing software to hack the company’s manufacturing operating software and transferring several gigabytes of data to “outside entities,” including dozens of confidential photographs and videos of the system. He also wrote...